How Has Y-Combinator Helped Kippt?
Back in June we covered how the Finnish startup Kippt had been accepted into Y-Combinator. The founders are back in Finland for a quick visit and we decided to have a chat with Jori Lallo about the impact Y-Combinator has had on them. Y-Combinator has been ranked the best startup accelerator in the world by Forbes and there are surely others as well.
The reason is quite simple. The accelerator has produced some of the most valuable internet startups in less than 10 years. Since the founding of the program in 2005, companies such as Airbnb and Dropbox have graduated, not to mention Reddit whose co-founder Steve Huffman spoke at Arctic15 last year.
Finland's Kippt Releases New Features And Joins Y Combinator
Kippt, the bookmarking service started by Finnish entrepreneurs Karri Saarinen and Jori Lallo, has been accepted into perhaps the world's most famous startup accelerator, Silicon Valley's Y Combinator. Along with the announcement, Kippt has announced new social features that help groups share lists of bookmarks publicly and privately. We covered the company previously just a couple of weeks ago here on ArcticStartup.
Kippt allows users to bookmark websites through a bookmarklet or web extension. When doing so, you throw the bookmark into a folder, allowing you to keep your bookmarks organized. The new sharing features build off of thus feature, allowing users to share their folders publicly or privately.
Kippt Brings Depth And Clarity To Bookmarking
"One thing I've learned over the years, it's that you should just build something and put it out there. If people don't care, you can fix it. If people care, then you're off to a good start," says Karri Saarinen, co-founder of Kippt. It sounds like advice he's given at tens of RailsGirls events, but he's put it to practice and reaped the benefits at his newest project. Kippt is a bookmarking platform designed for professionals to collect, organize, and share information easily.
The service operates through a bookmarklet or browser extension. When you collect something to Kippt, the page and its content becomes searchable, organizable, readable on your devices and easily shared with other people. Kippt is flexible in the sense that you don’t need to worry about losing any bookmarks or information, or how you’re going to use the information, or where to put it.
New Improved ArcticStartup
If you're reading this through our e-mail newsletter or an RSS reader, you should come visit our site as we've done a small facelift with some additional features to the site. I've outlined some of the key improvements to the site in this post, to help our community take advantage of those. First and foremost though, I'd like to publicly thank our Karri Saarinen for putting in all the extra work to get this done. He's worked with Kisko Labs to get the site out and functional. Many thanks for the effort!
Flowdock Commercialises Itself
Flowdock, which claims to be the best team messenger out there, has gone into production and paid mode as of this morning. We covered Flowdock back in October 2009 when they were just coming out with their product. They've come a long way since and it makes for an interesting story to cover, especially from a go-to-market point of view. I had a brief chat with Otto Hilska, one of the founders and CTO of Flowdock. During the last year, more or less the whole time of their beta program, they have managed to gather interest from 6000 teams who have used their product.
Co-editor for Sweden!
The Nordic and Baltic startup scenes have come of age and ArcticStartup has grown with them. Much has been done, but there's still much to do. I will outline some of the changes, improvements and future plans below, but there's one message above else that should take priority: We are looking for a new member to fill big boots in our team. We are looking for a full-time co-editor for Sweden. This role is a big deal and it will also command equal compensation.
We will offer a modest monthly salary and equity for a suitable candidate who is a real self-starter and can take the lead in the Swedish market building a strong editorial side-by-side with the team in Finland, as well as develop the monetization and business areas, which we will identify together. We expect you to have:
- Some previous writing experience (a personal blog or articles in other publications)
- An interest in reporting on breaking stories
- Familiarity with the Web and online business
- Fluency in Swedish and English
- An interest in entrepreneurship
- An interest not only in journalism, but also in monetizing an online media
Also:
- Previous work or connections with advertisers are a plus
We don't care so much about what you have done before, but want to hear what you will do in the future as the co-editor of ArcticStartup. Send your application to editor(at)arcticstartup.com by 20 December 2009.
The co-editor will join a strong team. Antti Vilpponen has taken on an important role as our new CEO making sure the business stays on course. Antti will also have an active role writing stories just as before, and will keep our product development on schedule. What product development, I hear you asking.
We recognize that there are a number of ways we could help out the startups in their journey from an idea to a successful business. We have watched the space for quite a while and have subsequently identified the areas we believe we can really help out. It's still early days regarding the product and we'll be sure to let you try it, see it and comment on it when there's something ready. I'm happy to announce that Karri Saarinen will lead our product development with the help of the rest of the team.
Further, Hendrik Morkel has joined us as our new cleantech writer to take the growing cleantech editorial forward with Päivi Kangasmäki and myself. Nick Mueller has also joined us to cover Sweden. We are really excited to welcome both writers to our editorial team (see everybody's bios here). Welcome guys!
On the same note, we are sad to inform you that our Sweden correspondent Paula Marttila has left the team. We thank Paula for her invaluable contribution and wish her all the best in her future endeavors.
Exciting times!
A New Writer Joins ArcticStartup
I am happy to announce that Karri Saarinen, an entrepreneur, web developer and an economics graduate student joins our ranks at ArcticStartup.
Karri will bring his strong technological understanding to our editorial team. This will enable us to dive even deeper into the technological innovations that the startups we follow bring into the market.
I believe that despite the hardship that the economy's downturn brings with it, it is also a healthy correction for the web 2.0 startup industry, even though this time our industry was not responsible for it like in the 2000s. Thus, I am sure that we will see healthier and more focused startups in the future and that is why we want to make sure ArcticStartup is better equipped than ever to write about the new startups. For this reason, Karri will be a a perfect addition to ArcticStartup team and give us the needed resources to bring you the news on the latest new startups across the Nordic and Baltic countries.
Welcome Karri!
